Meta Is Challenging Claude Code and Codex With New Muse Code

Meta is making strides to catch up to AI heavyweights like OpenAI and Anthropic. The company announced on Wednesday a new agentic coding tool and the new AI model that powers it. 

The terminal coding tool is called Muse Code, and it's powered by Meta Muse Spark 1.2, the latest update to Meta's revamped AI model family. Meta says it can run agents asynchronously in the background and execute complex coding tasks. Spark 1.2 has coding-specific improvements from last month's Spark 1.1 , particularly for code generation, debugging and codebase understanding.

Agentic coding uses AI tools called agents (or bots or, sometimes, claws , depending on your vernacular preference) to complete tasks autonomously. It's accelerated the trend of vibe coding, where you use agentic AI to create new websites and apps, with little coding experience required. Claude Code's release in 2025 was the first major tool to do so, followed by OpenAI's version called Codex .

Right now, Muse Code and the model behind it are only available to developers on Meta's developer website and OpenRouter , a site that hosts AI models. You'll need an API key to access them. Anyone can technically buy an API key, but the technical nature of the launch means it's likely best suited for software developers and engineers.

Meta has a pay-as-you-go system; Muse Spark 1.2 has similar pricing as with Spark 1.1, with $1.25 per million token input and $4.25 per million token output. But be careful: Companies that were "token-maxxing" this year quickly learned that heavy AI use comes with an equally hefty price tag. 

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